Masquerade: The Obscure Passion
by BPE Exeter
Summary: The sequel to "Void: The Origin of Desire."


Making love. Have you ever considered it? The animal drive, the needs, the pains and always the desperate understanding that, like all things, it will fail you. Can you understand this? Can you sense this while the passions send you toward oblivion?

The dreams of love are like the passions: destructive, yet fulfilling—always inadequate. Mesmerizing rays of glory…that is holding onto love while the world creeps toward the window and scrapes across the pane. I wish I knew how strong the world is. I wish I could hold my doubts at bay while I bask in the divine intimacy of Miyazawa…she, who belongs to everything and nothing simultaneously.

Perhaps, I am too explicit. I am unsure because I do not understand the subtlety of love. I would like to stand on the highest mountain, so I might declare my love to the bastard God.

God bless me, the bastard that I am. For you were created in my image…

**_Masquerade: The Obscure Passion_**

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**_By_**

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**_BPE Exeter_**

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I held her to my breast, her crimson hair teasing my translucent whiteness. The sun had not found my skin, as the sun had not found the heavens.

Miyazawa smelled of seraphim, the gourd to pour out glory upon a mass of putridity, the knobbed oak and the weeping willow.

"Can you understand?"

My voice is Atlas, strained by a globe of waste.

"I hear your voice, Arima. I see your tears. I understand you more than you know."

The fear…I am taken aback. The voice is unclear, yet it is morose, like my waking hours.

"You understand…"

"I know that you suffer…but you have to let go of pain."

"Pain is my life…life is pain."

"No, Arima, your life is only pain because you have allowed it to be so. Your life is no more or less than your perception."

The air is thin. The moisture has given way, and the sweat of our love-making has long mingled with some perverse odor of disquietude.

The heralding beast comes wearing his death garb. My eyes are torn…

"Can I kiss you?"

"My lips are yours to kiss."

"Yet…you hold me so tightly, like I'm going to leave."

"I will never leave."

"You cannot tell the future."

"Yes…though I know my heart…and it yearns for you."

The heat from our bodies condenses. I want to leave this place, lest I taint her more than I already have. Does my darkness spread?

Does he hear the things I hear? I wonder about Asaba sometimes. No matter the circumstances, he always seems so impenetrable.

Certainly, he may wear his emotions on his sleeves at times, but…I'm sure even this is for some ends.

He is a planner and a perpetrator…A great maven of schemes, yet you wouldn't know it from his outward appearance.

More than anything else, he's an idiot savant.

"So, I'm thinkin' that maybe the women are intimated by me…I mean that could be the only explanation."

Again, as I said, a true fool…thought all fools are true, I suppose.

"Hideaki, the women aren't intimated…you just come on a little too strong."

As of late I've been a bit more jovial, but these periods are few and far between…such is the consequence of overwhelming responsibility.

"Too strong! Too strong, he says!" I've only seen Asaba legitimately outraged once. It was because of Miyazawa. Otherwise, he's never serious. He is frightening in that way.

"You know, I'm right…you must be more subtle to truly grab a ladies attention."

It is ironic that I should speak of subtlety in matters of the heart. Perhaps, I am the fool…truly?

"Come on, Arima, give me some credit. At least I don't tell a girl that I love her after only knowing her for a few weeks."

I remember that morning—the room reeked of pencil shavings and apprehension.

"How raw of you to bring that up, Asaba."

"I'm only stating a fact. Besides, shouldn't you be concerned about other things. A very important date is fast approaching."

A date? What does he mean? Have I forgotten something that shouldn't be forgotten? Wait…no, I couldn't forget. Strange that the bronzed jester should recall something so simple, minute…forgettable. However, Miyazawa was involved. He always seems to remember Miyazawa.

"Did you hear me, Slick?"

"Yeah, I heard ya. But, let me worry about that…you should take care of the flock before they tear down all the fences."

"Ah, the lovely little lambs…"

The day passed in solitude. I ate lunch, I breathed in the silent sweetness, while Miyazawa cackled with her friends. Those girls…are so odd to me. What a strange group they make. Actually, I say they are strange only because I've never known a true friend. Until Miyazawa and Asaba, the only real relationships I'd ever known was with my adoptive parents. Of course, I'd had a few…well, acquaintances, I suppose. But, they were all…searching. Tsubasa was this way, though sometimes she didn't realize it. No matter the amount of time we spent together I could only connect with her as a convenient balm—a soothing panacea to take away all the gnawing pains of loneliness.

Was this Miyazawa? A convenient remedy, a cure-all that seemed to cause more illness. My illness, of course, is the illness of anxiety, of fearful trembling faced with an unknown tomorrow. I fear, not Miyazawa's presence, but the knowledge that she may not always be there. Tomorrow could open its putrid maw and swallow everything that I'd ever held dear.

Then what? What if I lost my happiness? Is life worth living without happiness?

Sadness lies dormant beneath the clear shoreline of goodness, pure and infinite. While my hands clasp at the fish that swirl about my submerged ankles, I peer into the sun, and am blinded by it. The sun is called Miyazawa; the sea is I, as the receding tide of cerulean reveals a large conch, broken in half. Where is the sea within that coiled mess? The one that the child hears is merely the wails of fish that've been lost to that vicious sea-demon, Unknown Tomorrow. You unyielding beast, god of destruction, where is the shoreline most thin, most translucent. Looking up from the mouth of oblivion, the sun breaks into a million separate strands of chromatic excellence.

Hope. Can there ever be such a thing? Never, so long as there is no shoreline, and the sun doesn't shine everlasting regardless of Unknown Tomorrow's dripping incisors.

Shine on.

The day coalesces and the night cultivates the shadow.

Love is the lasting warmth of the sun on the sea-foam, this unbroken fury.

Shine on.

The streets were brimming with vibrant tracks of humanity.

The extinguished cigarette in the gutter. The scent of boiling noodles. The feel of errant rocks beneath your feet.

Miyazawa carried a slight smile which spoke to me, secretly. I wanted to listen but could not understand. I never understand her when I most need to. I wish I could interpret smiles.

"Now, what were you telling me about next week?"

A slight breeze seemed to trap her floral perfume. It was light and saccharine.

"I want to take you somewhere."

My voice was colored by too much thinking. The great weight of thought is exquisite and deadly.

"That's fine, but why all the secrecy?"

"Why shouldn't I be secretive?"

"It's unlike you to keep secrets."

"My secrets are always good ones."

"And mine aren't?"

"You do not keep secrets."

"You're wrong. I simply know how to hide the truth."

"You wouldn't hide them so long as keeping them hurt you."

She was silent as I knew she would be. I am the one who holds the secrets.

"Have you…ever wondered?"

Her question breaks the din. I am surprised. Rarely does an action surprise me. Nevertheless, I cannot understand her.

"Wondered what?"

We sit and I grabbed her hand, while behind me an older woman herds children through a public park. She yells at one who has lost his way. He is corrected. I hear a church bell sound, as the air turns chill.

"Where we would have been…had we not known each other?"

Her eyes, which were previously downcast, look at me and into me. I sense in her gaze the myth of gods unborn, and a million dreams unrealized. The church bell subsides.

"I fear that I would have died. I was dying then…before I found you."

I suspected that I lied to her. It was not true because I was already dead, as all men are. Miyazawa had made me realize that the fear of this was folly, and such an understanding only contributed to annihilation and nothing.

"You found me, but where am I? How can I know that what I feel is right? Where does it all end when I can't see tomorrow because I'm so blinded by today? Am I too happy? Is this happiness everlasting or does it change and burst and reform? I worry, dearest, that the days are mounting before their appointed time. That, even in the midst of this dizzying happiness, something stings and scrapes at the rear of your consciousness, and no matter how hard you ignore it, it always comes back to you.

"I see it. When I hold you the tightest, and when our kisses are most intense—I see the imminent ruin at its core. I try to get it, Arima, I try to understand, but I'm so deathly afraid that this happiness will be stripped from me, or that it will cease to affect me as it does now. I want to be constant; I don't want to feel the world changing around me. How wonderful my dream…how wonderful to wake up in the morning and not worry about what the next morning will be like…or even the next."

She wept slightly. She never fully bawls. She is afraid of the tears which come from her burning eyes, those orbs of ignited spirit.

Tears never extinguish the fire, it only dulls the light.

I speak gentle and soothing words. Her home is quiet when we arrive, and I kiss her, almost violently.

It is strange, but, amidst this painful circumstance, I am reminded of the love, which exists between us. Love is the greatest understanding, the pinnacle of like-minds entrenched between the world and our own, ravaged and imperfect souls.

Time suddenly lost all real meaning. I recall a fluttering in my innards, and then a great shudder, as my body ceded warmth to Miyazawa. I remember holding her, while the sun came down. We hurriedly redressed when her parents and sisters arrived, and we retreated to her room.

That night ended in the same manner that all nights end for lovers. A farewell is spoken in the high language of passion, as the veil is dropped for another sleepless night. I heard the door to her home close a million times in my mind as I walked toward the dimly lighted street corner.

The walk to my home was in total quiet except for the crickets chirping their nightly minute waltz in repetition.

1,

2,

3,

And, again, they played that shrill chorus for me as tomorrow approached through the foreign, unknown lands.

Asaba met me before the gates of my home. He grinned the grin of all jesters, and told me that a great shock awaited me within. I am not easily shocked. I thought him a greater fool than usual.

The door was open a bit, and the exposure to the outside air left the foyer balmy and dense. I heard my parents talking softly, as though keeping immense secrets. I listened, trying to understand why such an odd thing should happen so late. The day should end with a light heart and peaceful rest.

I turned, and confronted with the full light of the dining room, my pupils dilated—my lids strained.

Dark hair and a trembling smile, he looked at me with trepidation. Some unknown figure, this gruff and unheralded interloper, with a loose shirt and patchwork jeans, he reminded me of a lowly degenerate or a kindly monk—perhaps, the greater and the lesser.

"Hello Souichiro."

Hello. Such presumption for such a mystery. I could wonder more, but my head lusts for softer things. I do not respond.

"I fear it has been far too long."

My Uncle looks grave, as if heaven fell on him and hell beckoned. He looks at me, and I sense my soul break. I know not why.

"Do you know me?"

"I'm afraid I do not, sir."

"Perhaps, you need only look inside, or remember a darker time."

I looked at the man's hands. And I recalled the tears of long ago. The horror in bluish white, like the demons of childish fancy, sending furious destruction again, and again, and again. The pain shot through my heart like rivulets of wrath, and my mind screamed through tongues that were incomprehensible.

"You…"

My voice quivers and dies. My soul dies. The fat moon feasts and sleeps away the nausea, while my soul escapes providence, and finds nothing elsewhere.

I am confronted by the darkest fear within me. He sits and stares while my mind goes numb.

"….father"

Surely, death has come on the back of a grizzled man with talons sinking through my tender flesh like a raptor set on shrieking vermin.

I remember nothing past this.

**_To Be Continued…_**

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Author's Note:

I had debated whether or not to make this a multi-part story, but I decided to take a cue from Random1377 and do a cycle of stories. I realize the ending will be frustrating to many, especially those of you that asked for the story to be continued, but I promise that I will give you all an ending in either three or four installments—no more and no less.

Again, I tried to maintain the style here, but I believe that it suffered a bit because of some additional plot elements that I wanted to include. I only hope that this doesn't detract from the experience.

Regards,

Exeter


End file.
